Ubuntu Sans

Try Ubuntu Sans

Weights and styles

• Thin 100Ubuntu Sans Thin Thin Italic
• ExtraLight 200Ubuntu Sans ExtraLight ExtraLight Italic
• Light 300Ubuntu Sans Light Light Italic
• Regular 400Ubuntu Sans Regular Italic
• Medium 500Ubuntu Sans Medium Medium Italic
• SemiBold 600Ubuntu Sans SemiBold SemiBold Italic
• Bold 700Ubuntu Sans Bold Bold Italic
• ExtraBold 800Ubuntu Sans ExtraBold ExtraBold Italic

Ubuntu Sans is a variable font: the download holds the whole weight range in one file per style, and the named weights above are positions on that range.

About Ubuntu Sans

Ubuntu Sans is a sans serif family made for the Ubuntu operating system, where it was meant to carry the system's personality into each menu, button and dialog. In the specimen the strokes stay nearly even in thickness, lowercase letters such as u and n drop the small spur where the curve meets the stem, and curves end in soft cuts, so words have a rounded outline. The family ships as two variable files, upright and italic, each with a weight axis from 100 to 800 and a width axis from 75 to 100. Eight named weights with italics make 16 styles. The fonts hold 1,849 glyphs and cover Latin, Cyrillic and Greek character sets. Canonical funded the development; the technical design work is credited to Dalton Maag, with Type Network, DJR and Dual Type also named. The license is the Ubuntu Font Licence 1.0.

Where Ubuntu Sans works

Desktop and web interfaces

The family was started for interface text, and the steps from Thin to ExtraBold separate labels, menu items and window titles.

Tight layouts

The width axis narrows the letters down to 75, which fits table headers, sidebars and long button labels without bringing in a second family.

Documentation and help pages

Regular with its italic handles running text, while Medium and SemiBold mark terms and headings in manuals and release notes.

Products in Latin, Cyrillic and Greek

The character sets include the letters for languages such as German, Turkish, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Greek, so one family can serve several locales.

Open-source project identity

The Ubuntu Font Licence lets projects modify and redistribute the fonts as long as the notices stay with them, so the family can be bundled with software.

Glyphs

Language support

The family contains the core letters these languages are written with:

• English
• French
• German
• Spanish
• Portuguese
• Italian
• Dutch
• Swedish
• Norwegian
• Danish
• Finnish
• Icelandic
• Catalan
• Turkish
• Polish
• Czech
• Slovak
• Hungarian
• Romanian
• Croatian
• Slovenian
• Lithuanian
• Latvian
• Estonian
• Russian
• Ukrainian
• Bulgarian
• Greek

Writing systems with glyphs in the family besides Latin: Cyrillic, Greek. These are listed as scripts, not as a promise for every language written in them.

Character sets found in the files: cyrillic, cyrillic-ext, greek, greek-ext, latin, latin-ext. The language list is a check of required letters against the font, not a promise of typographic quality in each language.

License

Fonts that pair with Ubuntu Sans

Suggestions come from simple rules on the records: a contrasting classification and enough weights to carry body text. They are a starting point, not a verdict.

Use Ubuntu Sans on the web

Download the family and host the files on your own site, then declare them in CSS. Please do not link to the files on trendhub.net: preview files here are subsets and their addresses change.

@font-face {
  font-family: "Ubuntu Sans";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/UbuntuSans-Italic-VariableFont_wdth%2Cwght.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 100 800;
  font-style: italic;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Ubuntu Sans";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/UbuntuSans-VariableFont_wdth%2Cwght.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 100 800;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: "Ubuntu Sans", sans-serif;
}

Or load it from the official source. Google Fonts serves Ubuntu Sans with this markup:

<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin>
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Ubuntu+Sans:ital,wght@0,100..800;1,100..800&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

Things to know

Weight stops at ExtraBold

The weight axis ends at 800. There is no Black 900 in Ubuntu Sans.

The width axis only narrows

Width runs from 75 to 100 and the default, 100, is the widest setting; there is no expanded range.

A license of its own

Ubuntu Sans uses the Ubuntu Font Licence 1.0, not the SIL Open Font License. A substantially changed version has to be renamed.

Two variable files

The package holds one upright and one italic variable font. Static files for individual weights come from the official source.

FAQs

Collections with Ubuntu Sans

• Variable fonts with a width axis

  Variable families in which letter width is adjustable as well as weight, from slight narrowing for copy-fitting to a full condensed-to-wide range.

Similar fonts

Other families in the same classification, ordered by shared use tags. All sans serif fonts